Director Eli Roth has made a career out of his one true love, grindhouse cinema. Low-budget, heavily violent films that focus less on story and more on getting as much blood on screen as possible. The problem now is that it’s been more than two decades since Roth’s signature feature, Hostel, and most young people today are less familiar with the director’s thematic north star, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Ice Cream Man marks another attempt by Roth, following his last film, Thanksgiving, to meet this young audience on their own terms. Featuring a cast of mostly child actors, the film balances a wryly amusing concept with depraved horror set pieces that will only scratch the itch of most die-hard genre fans.

Ice Cream Man takes place in a picturesque suburban town. Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) misplays a routine flyball at the local baseball game after getting distracted by an ice cream man’s mischievous grin over in his parked truck. After the game, his team enjoys some frozen treats with weirdly branded flavours, including spiders and snakes. Jared is lactose-intolerant, which turns out to be a lifesaver after the ice cream turns all of his friends into homicidal zombies who go on to murder their parents and other authority figures.

Horror has never been more mainstream after breakout hits like the Terrifier films and, most recently, Obsession. Roth takes advantage of that by firing on a script he’s held onto for more than 20 years, unsure previously about children cutting up their parents’ limbs onscreen. But he was pleasantly surprised when the cast’s parents were huge fans of his work and were totally supportive of the project. During Thanksgiving, Roth even made sure to consult his friends’ kids for advice on character motivation. That film also tried tapping into the TikTok craze by including livestreaming and casting online celebrity Addison Rae.

While his dedication to authenticity is admirable, much of the dialogue in Ice Cream Man is grating to sit through. Not a surprise  or out of the ordinary given the director’s past catalogue, for sure. The worst culprit would be a throwaway scene that attempts some character development—where a family discusses the generational differences demonstrated by knowing who Mitt Romney is. It’s a scene that far overstays its welcome.

Continuing the trend of dialling into Gen Z fads, Roth uses artificial intelligence both in the storytelling here and, contentiously, in practice. The evil ice cream man activates and controls the cursed children via AI-generated cartoons on their phones, featuring characters committing acts of violence to the tune of a catchy jingle. What could at first be viewed as a satirical statement on how artificial intelligence has taken hold of the minds of young ones in the real world is undermined by the filmmaker’s use of the AI visual effects company Dark Half to create the phone pieces.

Although no additional AI has been confirmed besides the short cartoons, it is one of the most overt uses of the technology in film in recent memory. Three years ago, Late Night With the Devil was virtually dead on arrival once the director confirmed they “experimented” with AI for short intermittent still images between scenes. Since Ice Cream Man has even more obvious uses of AI, it would be unsurprising if it was the only excuse audiences needed to skip the film completely, and frankly, they would be justified in doing so. It just demonstrates the production’s unnecessary corner-cutting when contracting an artist or finding licensed material — a feat that would have been just as easy and would have looked remarkably better.

The tangible art from the makeup and prosthetics team (Steve Newburn and Adrien Morot) is what makes Ice Cream Man stand out. The head smashes are gooey and satisfying, and completely up to Roth’s usual standard. A bulk of the film’s middle act includes the zombie children with ice cream residue lathered around their mouths, pulling teachers out of the school and massacring them in unique ways such as scooping out their brains. Roth also plays around with the “childlike innocence” tone by having characters play tug-of-war with intestines and tag with a severed hand. Because, why not?

Roth has his craft down to a science at this point in his career, too. By using fundamental concepts like ice cream, hostels, or the Thanksgiving holiday, he is able to write rudimentary structures around the over-the-top violence, which is what really matters to genre fans. This tactic is a throwback to small horror films of the ’90s, which is where Roth got the idea for his film in the first place.

But that’s where Ice Cream Man truly falters: when the director tries to adapt his regular, old-school playbook for the present day. The young characters here feel out of touch, and the inclusion of artificial intelligence is a blatant misfire. That said, audiences will come to see children tear up adults, and Roth knows that. He may also be aware of how all the baggage surrounding his films works as a deficit. It’s hard to say. But ultimately, though the film has flashes of entertainment on its own merits, it may not be enough to win audiences over.

Ice Cream Man opens in theatres August 7.